f the red and green
monster. He waited in a sort of a horrified, listening attitude. He
seemed to shut his eyes and wait to be gobbled.

A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly at his
rifle suddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne
an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his
life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. He blanched like one who has
come to the edge of a cliff at midnight and is suddenly made aware.
There was a revelation. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There
was no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.

Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The youth turned his
head, shaken from his trance by this movement as if the regiment was
leaving him behind. He saw the few fleeting forms.

He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great
clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of
safety. Destruction threatened him from all points.

Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle
and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap
of his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender
cord, swung out behind. On his face was all the horror of those things
which he imagined.

The lieutenant sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his features
wrathfully red, and saw him make a dab with his sword. His one thought
of the incident was that the lieutenant was a peculiar creature to feel
interested in such matters upon this occasion.

He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down. Once he
knocked his shoulder so heavily against a tree that he went headlong.

Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been
wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder
blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the
eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it
is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The
noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be
crushed.

As he ran he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and on
his left, and he heard footsteps behind him. He thought that all the
regiment was fleeing, pursued by these ominous crashes.

In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one
meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first